The paper studies unit max switch constraints in unit commitment problem. The unit commitment is a mixed integer problem widely used in short term energy system scheduling. Its computational complexity strongly depends on its dimension. According to Russian power energy market regulations max switch constraint is submitted by a participant and is active for arbitrary seven day time period. In the paper it is shown however
that it is sufficient to set this constraint in the model for only certain time periods. These are determined by times in seven day prehistory of the planning horizon where the unit changed state. Hence, vast majority of constraints of this type are redundant and could be safely removed from the model. This increases efficiency of the methods used to solve the resulting problem.
Keywords:
wholesale electricity market, energy system scheduling, unit commitment, nonlinear optimization, mixed-integer programming
